Small-town Cataclysm
The settings of great science fiction novels can be classed in two categories: the exotic and the mundane.
The exotic setting is where the author sends or plonks the reader right in the midst of another world or the far future of our world. The mundane setting is where the author describes the familiar world we know, and how something strange or alien impinges on it - whether by means of disaster, invasion or other important change.
The two settings make different demands on the writer (and reader). For the exotic setting to be effective, the author must create an entire world, make it sufficiently convincing to carry the burden of the plot, and yet ensure that its values or emotions are linked enough to our own nature that we retain our interest in the characters and their fates.
For the mundane or humdrum setting to be effective, the author must realistically describe enough of our normal familiar world, to allow the development of that sense of awe and suspense at the impingement of the strange on the familiar, which is the special hallmark of this type of science fiction. In other words, what you must do is: first make the reader comfortable, then bring in the hints and the suspense, leading to some stupendous, cataclysmic revelation.
The revelation may or may not consist of some huge disaster. In Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, it does, whereas in the same author’s Chocky, the revelation is confined to one family (plus a meddling psychologist).
The atmosphere of a small town is particularly suitable for the mundane or humdrum scenario. Obviously it is tailor-made for providing a rich contrast between the ordinary and the special. Clifford Simak does it splendidly in All Flesh is Grass, Ring
The same is true for some of the novels of Stephen King, such as Dreamcatcher, The Tommyknockers and Firestarter. King is actually not capable of anything else apart from that kind of story which is grounded in the here and now. He is a master of the impingement of the strange on the familiar; he could not (like Frank Herbert in Dune) master the impingement of the strange on the strange.
In my view there is nothing like the special charm of a novel set in an ordinary town that depicts an ordinary character who has to cope with an extraordinary occurrence or development. One of my favourite Philip K Dick novels is Time Out of Joint, where the twist comes with the realization that the small-town normality is a fake set up to deceive one man. But so well is it done that the reader develops an affection for the fake, and this is why I include it in this essay. The atmosphere is what counts.
I will finish by mentioning two great novels by Eric Frank Russell: Three To Conquer and With a Strange Device. In the former, the character is admittedly not quite ordinary, in that he is a telepath. But the way the story is handled, we feel Wade Harper to be primarily a decent, likeable man who happens to have a talent he does his best to hide. In the latter novel, the protagonist is truly ordinary, a scientist who is the victim of an espionage plot involving the implanting of artificial memory. It was Russell’s last book
Robert Gibson is caretaker of the Ooranye Project, creating a fictional giant planet which can be explored on www.ooranye.com. The project’s aim is to meld the subgenres of Future History and Planetary Romance, resulting in over a million years of civilization with its own societies, customs, conflicts, triumphs and disasters, politics, philosophies, flora and fauna, empires both human and non-human, and adventures that range over an area ten times that of the surface of the Earth. Lovers of planetary adventure are invited to view the history, comment on the progress of the project, access the tales and keep in touch with the developing destiny of Ooranye.
Tags: Clifford Simak, Eric Frank Russell, Philip K Dick, science fiction, small town, Stephen King